Locations

IT'S TRASH TIME. Philly Spring Cleanup, the annual anti-litter event that last year mobilized 12,000 volunteers, returns Saturday with more than 500 locations around the city. In its sixth year, the cleanup encourages city residents to take to the streets with brooms and gloves, and cleanse a city with a serious litter issue. Residents collect more than 1 million pounds of trash each year. How it works is the city relies on community organizations to help recruit volunteers and initiate projects.

LA Weight Loss said it is closing 22 locations in the Philadelphia and Harrisburg regions, a move that will cost 55 people their jobs. That includes 16 stores and 45 employees in the Philadphia area. The Toronto company said it would encourage its 1,500 clients to use its online and telephone support program. The company blamed "changing client behavior and a lingering recession" for the decision to close the stores, which officially closed Monday, but will remain accessible this week to customers who meet with their weight-loss consultants to set up a transition plan.

Ikea, the Swedish home furnishings retailer with U.S. headquarters in Conshohocken, on Tuesday announced plans to install 45,360 solar panels on ten locations in the southern United States. The panels will have a generating capacity of 10.7 megawatts. The retailer already has 23 solar systems installed or under way. The ten new locations will increase the company's solar presence to 75 percent of its U.S. locations. - Andrew Maykuth

It's National Coffee Week and several retailers are giving away free cups. Participating East Coast McDonald's locations - 5,000 in all, says a company rep - will be pouring free small cups each day through Saturday of Premium Roast Coffee. To find a location, go to www.mcdonalds.com , click "locations" and punch in a town or zip code. To see the ad for the offer, scroll below the map, find the store, and click "Restaurant Homepage. " Participating 7-Eleven stores will be dispensing large free 20-ounce cups from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. Friday, Sept.

Life on the street was particularly wretched yesterday for Barry Johnson, who tried to keep dry on a steam grate at the corner of 15th and Spring Garden Streets. Today may be another miserable one as the rains keep coming; some locations can expect two or more inches.

Voorhees Township officials and Main Street developer John B. Canuso Sr. have reached an informal agreement in a dispute over the number of locations for the Main Street liquor license. "I think both sides gained something from it," Mayor James L. Curran said. "This should put the whole liquor-license situation to bed for a while. " Under the terms of the settlement, which is expected to be signed later this month, the township will allow two additional locations for Main Street's Class C consumption license - bringing the total to five, said Frank Thatcher, township solicitor.

Saladworks, a Conshohocken restaurant franchise with about 100 locations in 12 states, said it signed a 15-store agreement with a franchisee in Singapore. The first location in Singapore is slated to open next year, with two more to follow in 2013, Saladworks said. Saladworks was founded 25 years ago in the Cherry Hill Mall. In early 2008, Commerce Bank founder Vernon W. Hill II became a minority investor. - Harold Brubaker

In honor of National Pretzel Day - for real - Philly Pretzel Factory is handing out free soft pretzels today at its more than 100 locations. Sixty are in Pennsylvania, 38 in New Jersey, with a handful in Delaware, and one or two in five other states. Locations can be found at www.phillysoftpretzelfactory.com/#/locations . No purchase necessary, the company says. Lancaster pretzel-maker H.K. Anderson also has a kind of giveaway. "The contest is simple," says spokesman Steve Robinson.

The trial has not started yet, but lawyers are already baring their fangs in the fight between Sen. Robert Menendez and the federal prosecutors accusing him of accepting bribes. In court filings debating where to hold the New Jersey Democrat's trial, prosecutors accuse Menendez of "seeking special treatment" by asking to move the case from Newark to Washington and trying to avoid his own constituents. "Put simply," federal prosecutors wrote, "the Department of Justice is more confident than Senator Menendez that a New Jersey jury will objectively consider the evidence.

One in a continuing series spotlighting real estate markets in the region's communities. 'Nice town, friendly people. " That's how Maple Shade sees itself - it's the official motto of this Burlington County community. And you'll get no argument from most folks, residents or not. Larry O. Blinn, of Century 21 Alliance in Moorestown, who has lived in Maple Shade for 18 years, calls it "family-friendly. " "It may be politically incorrect, but I call it a 'blue-collar town,' " Blinn says.

A Pennsauken printing and packaging firm will receive $34 million in tax credits to relocate to and expand in neighboring Camden. Approved Friday morning, the deal for Contemporary Graphic Solutions is another by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority to help bring economic activity to the city. The company plans to also spend about $7.5 million in capital investment and add 56 full-time positions to its current staff of 170, according to a project summary with the agency.

One in a continuing series spotlighting real estate markets in the region's communities. It might have been sunny enough Wednesday to lure a few homeowners with rakes into their front yards, but for Grace Metzinger and Joyce Hines it was business as usual in the basement of the Rockledge Municipal Building at Huntingdon Pike and Robbins Avenue. Metzinger, the borough's manager for the last seven years, and Hines, its administrative assistant, spent the day, as they always do, sweating the details that make things run efficiently in this Montgomery County community tucked into 0.3 square miles between Fox Chase and Abington.

The Pop Shop, a brightly decorated soda fountain and eatery that created a sensation when it opened in Collingswood a decade ago, is opening its second location in downtown Medford on Saturday. The owners have renovated the former Burlington County National Bank, built in 1837, and turned its vault into a soda fountain. The vault's 2,000-pound door displays shiny gears, giving the colorful Pop Shop an added attraction. "What's different from the Collingswood Pop Shop is, this one has two floors and soaring ceilings and four dining rooms," said Connie Correia, one of four owners.

As RadioShack and other troubled chains weigh plans for closing stores across the United States, others see an opportunity to grab new locations. "We have a lease" to take over one of the 29 Philadelphia-area RadioShack stores, and are negotiating for others from Boston to Austin, Texas, says Todd Leff , chief executive of Hand & Stone Massage and Facial Spas , a 200-store franchise based in Hamilton, N.J. The chain has 35 locations in the Philadelphia area...

One in a continuing series spotlighting real estate markets in the region's communities . On the plus side, Weichert Realtors agent Candy Niedoba says, Pennsauken is South Jersey's best-kept secret: a traditionally blue-collar Camden County community with affordable housing that draws a variety of buyers. The still-recovering economy that has stymied the efforts of low- to moderate-income Americans to buy homes has been a boon to this town across the Delaware River, whose unusual name purportedly means tobacco pouch in Leni-Lenape.

One in a continuing series spotlighting real estate markets in the region's communities. Realtor Barbara Mastronardo sums it up this way: "Morton has a multiple personality. " One is the Delaware County municipality, the focus of today's real estate market discussion. The other is Morton the zip code, 19070. As Mastronardo, of Weichert Realtors' Media office, explains, it can muddle the issue for those looking for a house in the borough. "The zip code covers Morton, Rutledge, and parts of Springfield and Ridley, which means that it falls into two school districts, Ridley and Springfield," she says.

WE ARE hardworking volunteers and spend many hours fighting to maintain the quality of life of the residents south of Packer Avenue that live in our two communities. District 1 comprises 221 residences between 13th and Broad streets, South of Packer Avenue - three blocks from the proposed Live! Casino. District 2 comprises 1,250 residences and is a few blocks farther west, and is already heavily impacted by the traffic that the sports complex generates now. Our convent, rectory, the Mastery Charter Elementary School and Stella Maris Church are within two blocks of 10th and Packer.

Leaving behind a lifetime of memories in a church is never easy. But Ukrainian Catholics in the Philadelphia region, like their Roman Catholic brethren, are contending with dwindling numbers of churchgoers in some parishes, prompting mergers as a way to survive. For two Ukrainian Catholic parishes in Delaware County, merging at a new location next year, the decision to uproot themselves was a little easier to accept because it was made internally by parish councils, rather than ordered by the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, parishioners said.